A kiss so deep, so glorious, her head spun. His silken tongue had probed the inside of her mouth, slick and sure, encouraging her lips to meld with his.
But now? Now he was looking at her as though she’d sprouted an extra arm. “What the hell was that?”
Like she had all the answers?
Well, stupid. You are the nurse in charge here.
Ella frowned up at him, forcing her voice to remain calm even if she was a writhing mess inside. “I think the same might be asked of you. I know what I was doing, big guy. I was doing the dishes—messy dishes, too. It was, after all, spaghetti night.”
His eyes took on a faraway look. “Yeahhhh,” he mumbled. “And you know what?”
Her eyes narrowed. Maybe this was it? Maybe he was going to remember everything about her in one upchuck of memories? Oh. This flushed, kissed-so-sound-her-eyes-were-still-crossed incident was probably not the most medically or psychologically sound way for him to remember who she was. Who he was. Who they’d been.
Jesus. She was a shitty, shitty caregiver.
Her response was tentative and just shy of a cringe. “What?”
Crosby pointed to the sink. “Seeing you do the dishes was really familiar. Doing what…you know, what I just did, was very familiar. It was like I’d done it a hundred times before.”
It was probably more in the area of a hundred and fifty or so. If you counted the period when they’d dated, that is. Crosby had always loved a good sneak attack from behind. In the early stages of their relationship, hardly a night had gone by that they made it past the dishes before they were naked and he was deep inside her.
And who was she kidding? She’d loved it, too. She’d loved every single mind-blowing thing Crosby did to her when they made love. They had been among the most difficult images to wash her mind of when they’d separated.
The visual of him with his head thrown back in the height of passion, his dark hair against her fairer skin, never failed to make her knees so much butter. But she’d managed to forget about that—erase the pleasure and replace it with the shitty thing he’d done.
And now this. This. This. This.
None of this cockamamie scheme of hers was going as planned. They’d been here for a solid week. A solid week with not a single memory regained. Nothing. Instead, they’d begun to create a whole new cache of moments she’d spend yet more nights crying over than the pre-amnesiac Crosby deserved.
All week long she’d fought to avoid his flirtatious advances. All while they’d shared meals together and long walks in the woods behind her house and in-depth chats about life. They’d folded laundry together. They’d planted tulips for next spring together. They’d watched movies together and Crosby hadn’t even made a single request to watch a baseball game.
She’d gritted her teeth each time he’d brushed against her in the tight space of her small hallway until her jaw was going to need a hinge. She’d considered bleaching her eyeballs to erase the tantalizing memory of him in nothing but a towel loosely draped around his waist. She’d dreamt about the chiseled, cut edges of his hips, the ripped line of his abs leading downward, until she thought she’d scream with frustration.
She had fought a long, hard battle all week long to keep her emotions in check and not fall for this fun, stress-free Crosby all over again. She knew the disappointment of his eventual return would only hurt more than it had the first time.
But just look. Oh, Ella Stills. You dirty, dirty whore.
Allowing, nay, succumbing to his kiss was rather defeating the purpose of bringing him back here in the first place, wasn’t it? She’d agreed to this so the pack would set her free from the binds that tied them, only to find herself binding them tighter. Or maybe it was bonding? Whatever. Either way, this wasn’t supposed to happen. No matter how incredible or hot or missed he’d been.
“Ella?” Crosby gave her a gentle shake, his fingers gripping her shoulders. “Did you hear me?”
She cleared her throat, talking around the lump. “Yeah. I heard. Familiar, you said.” At all costs, she would remain calm.
He nodded his dark head, his ruddy skin glowing under the recessed lighting above the sink. “Like I’d always done it. Did I live with someone before this happened? Maybe that was why it seemed so natural for me to…well, you know…”
Oh, she knew. “No. But I’m sure you’ve had lots of girlfriends.” Lots. She knew for a fact he’d had plenty of girlfriends.
“You’re angry. Shit. Tell me you don’t have a boyfriend,” he said, concern flooding his green-green eyes.
“No, no boyfriend, and ‘angry’ isn’t the word I’d use, by the way.”
“What is the word you’d use? Personally, I’d go for hot. Now that I know you don’t have a boyfriend. But I’m a guy, and even though I’m a guy with amnesia, I don’t think that would change the fact that my vocabulary is a little stunted when it comes to expressing my emotions about this kind of stuff. I mean, I think it is. I don’t know for sure. I could be a real Romeo with the words and the ladies. But this silly amnesia prevents me from remembering,” he said on another infuriating grin, tapping his head.
“I’d use a phrase. A phrase like ‘let’s forget this ever happened’ and go to bed. Separately.” Ugh.
His smile was easy and full of his special brand of charm. “Well, again, I gotta go with the guy thing, and I’m not exactly sure I can forget something like that. It was a little unforgettable. I mean, how can I watch you do the dishes every night and not reminisce?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You could do the dishes. That should do it.”
Crosby chuckled, that warm, inviting chuckle that made her want to nestle against his chest and wrap her arms around his lean waist. “You said I wasn’t as good at rinsing them as you are.”
Nuh-uh. She’d never said that once since Crosby had been back here. However, she used to say it to him all the time when she’d unloaded the dishes and they still had food caked on them.
But if she reminded him of that, he’d likely make their connection, and though she’d gone into this arrangement with what she’d thought was a level head, she clearly hadn’t thoroughly thought out all the variations on a theme. Like—if Crosby was ever going to get his memory back, surely there were many things that would be associated with her while he connected the dots.
So she backed off and didn’t point it out. “Well, it’s true. You did—do suck at rinsing. Now get away from the window. The werewolf community is small and they love a good piece of gossip. Especially Mavis Brecklestein and her gangster crew of merry quilters.” She pointed to the window above her kitchen sink.
He glanced over her shoulder at the darkened glass, smoothly putting his arms around her waist. “You don’t have neighbors.”
Ella nodded, moving out of his grip and keeping her eyes above his waist. “I don’t mean people who actually live in houses, no. They’re pretty spread out here in Cedar Glen. I mean some of the pack often roam my property at night, and there’s always the potential they’d see us. Like this…”
“The pack wanders around at night? You lost me.”
Perfect. Change of subject. She busied herself folding the hand towel they’d launched across the floor when they’d behaved like teenagers with a backseat and some free time on their hands.
“Yes, they roam at night. The pack loves a good night run. So pack lesson number one. The pack as a whole essentially lives near each other. I live a bit farther out of town than most, but I love being secluded by the woods. It’s not mandatory we live together, but most of us choose to stick close to one another, run businesses together, etcetera. We can blend with humans, but we prefer not to live near them to avoid ending up with a silver bullet in our head.”
“So the silver bullet thing is really true? Like on TV?” Crosby asked.
“Yep. All true. Just like on TV.”
“But unlike TV, we don’t hate humans and eat them like a ham and cheese Lunchable?”
/> “That’s right. Absolutely no mauling humans—ever. They’re as safe from us as another pack member would be. In fact, if you ever harm a human, you’re subject to pack rule. Which is death, by the way. So know your rights and all that jazz. But all of Cedar Glen is paranormal. And the pack is co-run by Max Adams and his father, Brock. Like I said, that’s a long story. Suffice it to say, they’re our alphas. Anyway, unless you do business outside of here, you’re pretty safe.”
“Alphas?”
“Yep. Like a president-of-the-country sort of thing—just smaller and with a whole lot less red tape. Well, less than congress anyway. They manage Cedar Glen, and quite well since they teamed up, I might add.”
Crosby brushed the filmy, partially opened curtains back from the window and peered out into the black, chilly night. His glance was uneasy. “Are there a lot of these pack members skulking out there?”
“The surrounding area is filled with pack members. Probably about twenty square miles worth. Most packs choose heavily wooded areas in outlying bigger cities. That way, we can still commute to jobs but have a place to shift freely when the need arises. An especially critical asset when a full moon is upon us. There’s nothing tougher on a were than living in the city. That’s where I got my nursing degree. You have no idea how hard it is to shift between a bodega and Mr. Hwang’s Chinese Buffet. Anyway, our pack bought up a good deal of the land here in lovely Jersey, dubbed it a quote-unquote wolf sanctuary, all so we’d have the freedom to do what comes instinctually. But there are humans surrounding us—which is always cause for care. But that’s for another day, another werewolf lesson.”
Crosby held up a lean finger. “About that.”
“The shift?”
“Yeah. That. I haven’t had any of the instincts you described at all. Well, except for the one at the kitchen sink.” He grinned and wiggled his raven eyebrows. “So how do I know you’re telling me the truth? How do I know I really am a werewolf? I’ve been here a week, and nothing. Not a single flash of fur.”
“I guess—aside from your acute sense of smell, the fact that the baseball on your head healed itself virtually overnight, and you can eat a twenty-eight-ounce, raw porterhouse with a side of rib eye without yarking it back up—you don’t. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Maybe you could show me?”
“You mean show you the shift?” Ella ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek. “That’s the impulsive ten-year-old in you talking, Crosby Nash. The one who thinks this werewolf thing is crazy-cool—like Star Trek and Buck Rogers cool. But you’ve had a severe head trauma. Adding to that trauma by actually showing you the shift could make things worse. It’s not as cool as you’ve made it out to be in your movie-reel mind. It’s very intimidating, and not something you just show someone. Even someone who’s been prepared.”
“You know what the impulsive thirty-eight-and-a-half-year-old says?” he asked, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger playfully.
She batted his hand away from her mussed hair and frowned her Nurse Stills frown. “I’m all anticipatory.”
“He says forget about shifting and packs, and let’s make out some more.”
Planting a hand on his chest, Ella stopped him short, shaking her head and fighting a suddenly ridiculous rush of tears. They could never do that again. No matter how great the kissing, Crosby was still no good for her.
Her heart tightened, so she bit the inside of her cheek hard. “No, no and triple no. I made a huge error in judgment, Crosby. I’m your nurse, not your partner in porn.”
Crosby tipped her chin upward, his eyes riddled with concern. “Can you get into trouble for what happened?”
Gut-shredding, red-eyed, drippy-nose trouble? Yes. Pack trouble? No. They’d probably all stand up and do the wave if they thought she’d consider staying with their golden boy. “No. It just shouldn’t have happened, and that’s that.”
His face changed suddenly, going from light and playful to dark and stormy. “Hold up. Do I have a girlfriend or—Jesus, worse—a wife? Kids? Christ. I’m a cheater. Like on that show we watched last night.”
Funny question, that. “No, Crosby. You didn’t cheat on anyone.” Not today, anyway. “It was just wrong for me to do something like that. It was unprofessional and wrong. So wrong. You need to heal and remember in the gentlest way possible. Not make out.”
His carefree grin was back in place, his green eyes full of mischief. “Well, technically, you’re not a nurse right now. You said you were on sabbatical.”
“I am. But the pack didn’t ask me to undertake your recovery because of my incredible Tempurpedic skills. They asked me to do it because I know how to handle your medical issues. Not your love sacs.”
Crosby leaned down and planted a light kiss on the tip of her nose. “In your favor, Nurse Ella, I don’t have any medical issues to deal with. And sometimes as a nurse, handling love sacs is part of the job, right?” He chuckled at how clever he was as he sauntered out of the kitchen.
Ella breathed a sigh of relief, reaching for one of her kitchen chairs. She sank down into it and let her head drop to her folded arms, clenching her eyes tight to thwart the threat of tears.
No crying over spilled milk when you’d been partially responsible for knocking the glass over like you were a bull in a damn china shop. Ella gripped the edges of the table.
No crying.
* * * *
Crosby climbed into Ella’s guest bed with the lavender and mint-green comforter and put his hands under his head, relishing the cool darkness enveloping him.
He replayed in his mind what had happened with Ella at the kitchen sink, letting the hot visual of her in his arms take over, making him grin.
He had no explanation for what he’d done. The action had been purely instinctual and strictly based on this overwhelming lust he had for a woman who was quite possibly the crankiest person on planet Earth. That she was, for all intents and purposes, his nurse, clearly hadn’t made the kind of impact on him in quite the way she’d hoped.
He smiled again. Ella’s cranky was damn hot, and a challenge, and he had to wonder if challenges weren’t something he often rose to as Crosby the Werewolf. Her often sour mood stemmed from a place he couldn’t help but think involved him. Though he wasn’t quite sure how they’d known each other before his amnesia.
He found it wasn’t the fact he was a werewolf that kept him awake with a million questions in this lavender bedroom night after night—it was Ella. Tall and curvy, with an ass it was all he could do not to reach out and grab a fistful of.
It was the distantly familiar way she twirled her hair when she watched TV, and the comically haphazard position the clip in her hair ended up in when she tried to capture her thick, dirty-blonde mane.
But she was angry. He’d sensed that from the moment she’d introduced herself in the hospital. He sensed a lot of things about Ella. Blurry things. Out-of-focus things.
When he couldn’t pinpoint what those things were, he let them go.
Instead, he went with the flow and didn’t fight for the return of his memory. Whether he was supposed to or not, he found himself almost enjoying the fact that he had no memories to recall. The black void in his head was like taking a long, cleansing nap and awakening to find everything was right with the world. It was like winning the lottery and finding out you’d never have to stress over another bill again because you couldn’t remember you had bills.
It was on par with never having to work another day in your life because you had to. There were no obligations, no one needed anything from you, and you didn’t know if you needed anything from anyone else, either.
This state of suspension—for him, anyway—wasn’t maddening at all. He’d leave the maddening state of mind to Ella.
She excelled at it.
Crosby smiled in the dark as another visual of Ella, her eyes closed, her sweet body molding against his in hungry need, flitted through his mind’s eye.
He licked his lips, recalling the taste of her mouth, the glide of her smooth tongue when it dueled with his.
And then he smiled again, just for good measure.
Chapter 3
Ella breezed past Morton’s receptionist at Wolfe and Wolfe, the pack’s law firm, and pushed her way through the door of his office, averting her eyes to the strange looks she garnered from the people in the open reception area before she entered.
Okay. She looked like a homeless-shelter resident out on a day pass. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was a stringy mess of a chip-clipped nightmare on top of her head.
The fashionista in her had gone the way of the dinosaur because she was too busy stressing and avoiding close contact with Crosby to give a damn about her cute shoes and festively flirty skirts. By all that was holy, she was tired.
Morton’s head popped up in surprise but then he let his glasses slide to the end of his nose, peering over top of them with an amused smirk.
Ella flopped down in a chair in front of his desk, pulling her purse to her chest in protective mode. Her eyes felt grainy from lack of sleep and she was beginning to feel like a crazy bag lady from the strain of caring for Carefree Crosby.
She’d been on pins and needles since the night they’d kissed, just wondering when his memory was going to come back and remind her once more why sexing him up would be a huge mistake.
Or was that it at all? Maybe she was more worried the fun Crosby she was spending so much time with would be gone too soon. Ack.
Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she fought a yawn. Crosby, in all his yippy-skippy renewed lust for life, was exhausting.
Morton tapped a ballpoint pen on the top of his shiny desk. “Oh look. It’s Nurse Ella, and only two weeks into her impulsive yet prestigious return to the world of psychiatric nursing. I really thought you’d be in here day two of Crosby’s stay, but I’m impressed, Princess. You’ve really put the ‘T’ back in the word trooper. Don’t ever let anyone call you a sissy. So have you worked your magic shrink skills and shrunk him back to remembering yet?”
Bad Case of Loving You Page 3
